Since 2013, members of the MIT Media Lab community have set out from their research groups every summer to observe work in about 10 factories in China. Last summer, they went with a different approach—not just to visit but to collaborate on experimenting and cooperative design with two facilities in or near the city of Shenzhen. The hacking manufacturing summer course in August focused on the theme of soft robotic materials, and three instructors and seven lab students worked with a digital knitting factory called K-Tech and a flexible printed circuit board manufacturer called King.
